i nheriting a b ad h and 331been a forceful advocate for the Iraq surge and strongly urged that the
counterinsurgency methods introduced there be extended to Afghani-
stan. To him, McKiernan was the wrong offi cer to conduct a COIN
campaign, too old-school, too wedded to killing Taliban fi ghters rather
than securing the population. McChrystal would be a better choice for
the operational approach Keane and Petraeus believed was required.
In picking McChrystal, Obama set the stage for a dispute with the
military over what kind of war the United States would fi ght in Afghan-
istan. Th e president did not meet his new Afghanistan commander
before announcing the decision and had as yet not committed himself
to a counterinsurgency eff ort. But the military plainly had its own
ideas about the war. In his confirmation hearing before the Senate
Armed Services Committee, McChrystal said he might need an addi-
tional 20,000-plus troops, an indication that the military had started its
push for the forces that a protracted COIN campaign would require.
The president would find himself challenged to make sure that the
Pentagon, CENTCOM, and the military leadership in Afghanistan
would execute faithfully his ultimate policy decisions, and he would go
to unusual lengths to make certain of compliance.
Obama Claims Ownership
Over the following months and into late 2009, the administration
engaged in a thorough evaluation of its options for the war. Besides
culminating in a decision to commit roughly 30,000 additional troops
in 2010 and to begin drawing down the force in mid-2011, the process
also led to the president to redefine American war objectives. The
striking feature of the Afghanistan policy assessment is just how limited
the president’s choices were. Th ese constraints would push the president
to frame new and deeply problematic war goals. Obama would not
explain them clearly to the American people, either, because doing so
would risk damaging political fallout.
Much has been made of the painstaking decision process that the
president pursued before settling on his policy, but the attention misses
a more important point. Many meetings were devoted to weighing the
relative merits of a counterterrorism focus versus a COIN campaign
and whether to send the 40,000 troops McChrystal wanted or perhaps